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Yup. This is what I was just arguing with my family about-they voted Trump because they want manufacturing jobs back. I pointed out that if the US imposes trade

• Amezarak 10y ago
  That doesn't make it inevitable. We could create regulations about when and what automation is acceptable. That reality seems more likely to me in the present climate than a maybe more ideal solution like basic income - though I think the most likely outcome is huge (and increasing) swaths of the population languishing in permanent poverty.
  • chopin 10y ago
    > though I think the most likely outcome is huge (and increasing) swaths of the population languishing in permanent poverty I don't think so. You cannot only outsource manufacturing labor to robots. You can do with policing as well. So you don't have to worry for uprisings. These people will simply starve or being killed by robots.
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Assume, hypothetically, that the rich use robots and form their own economy and wall themselves off from the rest. Why can't the remaining people form a non-automated economy amongst themselves? Economically, it's equivalent to those rich people and their robots just not existing at all and their estates being filled with impassible mountains.
    • wayn3 10y ago
      It is equivalent to one of those films where the poor have to live on earth in relative poverty while the rich live in a base in orbit that sustains itself and is basically heaven. Do you believe the "not rich" wouldn't want to cross the wall?
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        But why can't the people living on earth create their own functional economy? In Elysium (the movie you are referring to) the answer is clear: Earth is full of sick children, Mexicans and lovable criminals. For reasons I didn't quite understand, those Mexicans are unable to build a functioning economy (perhaps because the lovable criminals cause too many problems). Do you believe that this is an accurate reflection of reality, namely that the non-rich can't organize themselves into a livable society without the aid of the rich?
        • maxerickson 10y ago
          Did you overlook the stifling, robotically enforced social control in Elysium? Why didn't the people on Earth start their own farms? Because the robots came and killed them if they tried.
          • yummyfajitas 10y ago
            I watched the movie on an airplane many years ago. I vaguely remember Matt Damon working in a robot factory and having a robot parole officer. I think robot bodyguards also protected Willem Dafoe. I don't recall robots preventing people from starting farms or providing medical care to the sick children, and that's missing from the wikipedia summary of the movie. Why would they do that? How would it benefit the space station to prevent earthers from building a functioning society?
            • maxerickson 10y ago
              Yeah, I haven't watched it recently either. But the social control is certainly implied (and the script was messy enough without spending 1/2 hour really spelling it out).
              • yummyfajitas 10y ago
                The social control might be present in the movie, but in reality it mostly doesn't exist. In reality we generally just ignore our low productivity areas, and perhaps make sure the folks from there can't cause problems elsewhere. The NYC and SF elites occasionally try to feel good by pointless throwing $100M at local problems that money can't fix [1], but mostly they ignore Newark. The Mumbai elite don't impose social control on the rural hinterlands, they just don't go there. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-failed-100-million-donation-to-newark-public-schools-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-failed-100-m...
    • maxerickson 10y ago
      The messy reality getting in the way of your hypothetical is that the rich have walls around an awful lot of the most useful resources.
    • mcbits 10y ago
      The remaining people can try to create an economy around the resources that aren't also walled off and guarded by robots.
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        The more inequality we have the less of a problem this is. More inequality => fewer elites => less resources used. Once the elites have ascended, they have no reason to care much about pesky non-elites using resources outside their enclaves. Observe how little effort contemporary humans put into keeping monkeys from enjoying monkey resources.
        • makomk 10y ago
          Contemporary humans are driving many monkey species to the point of extinction, so that example really doesn't help your point. It turns out that replacing monkey resources with stuff like farms to feed humans is very profitable.
          • yummyfajitas 10y ago
            Yes, that's a problem with having large numbers of humans - they crowd out the monkeys. Recall that we are discussing a high inequality situation where a tiny fraction of humanity walls itself off into robot enclaves where they satisfy their own needs without human labor. I.e., not enough people to crowd out anything.
            • mcbits 10y ago
              A small population needs a relatively small amount of resources to feed and physically sustain itself, but the amount of resources needed to build and feed an ever-growing population of robots is virtually unbounded. As computers get smaller and more efficient, data centers get larger and more power-hungry, for example.
• masklinn 10y ago
  > trade tariff's high enough to make manufacturing things like steel cost effective again in the US Nota: steel is cost-effective in the US given a modern (and automated) enough plant. As of 2015 the US are the #4 largest steel producer in the word[0], #2 being Japan (the top 10 is China, Japan, India, USA, Russia, South Korea, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, Ukraine). Though part of that may be existing tariffs (US steel production is mostly internal, it's the #11 exporter and #1 net importer of steel) Global steel employment has fallen like a brick since its heydays, even China's rise in steel jobs and production since the augths haven't compensated for the jobs lost to automation and efficiency increases (at mostly constant production outside of China). [0] country-specific, excluding the EU block
  • onion2k 10y ago
    Steel is expensive to move around. Making it where it's needed is a good idea. The same isn't true of most products.
    • gus_massa 10y ago
      If you don't move the steel, you have to move the iron ore, so I think there is not too much difference in cost unless you place the steel mill just between the iron mine and the use site. (You also need a lot of coal, but you can produce it locally if you have enough room to plant a big forest nearby.)
      • WalterBright 10y ago
        And steel will be lighter than the corresponding weight of ore and coal.
    • woliveirajr 10y ago
      If you have iron mine nearby your steel plant, and both are located where steel is needed, it's good. When you have to move iron around, you'd calculate how much it costs you to move the iron vs steel, since steel would have more value. Or if would be better to produce a car and move the car...
• melling 10y ago
  Is a US factory with a lot of robots better than an foreign factory with people paid less than $8/hour? The rise of the robots is being held back by cheap humans.
• Inconel 10y ago
  It is my feeling that at least some of the anger being expressed isn't so much about jobs being displaced by robots today or in the near future, although these are serious concerns as well, but instead the steady hollowing out of these manufacturing jobs through offshoring over a period of 20-30 years were the overwhelming financial benefits have gone to a very small portion of the American population, namely those occupying high positions within multinational corporations.
  • 6502nerdface 10y ago
    Arguably the overwhelming benefits have gone to a very large portion of the American population, so large that it's hard for individuals to trace and see. Think of the cascade of effects of all these manufacturing outputs being created more efficiently/cheaply, which in turn are inputs to other products, and the opportunity savings of which flow into other endeavors all around us. However, I do generally agree with your diagnosis that the anger isn't so much about automation per se, as about changes in post-war economic structures finally starting to reach some tipping point, whether perceived rightly or not.
    • cmdrfred 10y ago
      Do you have any data for that position? Wage growth for example has been flat overall: https://frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker/?panel=1 https://frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker/?panel=1 Half of Americans make under 30k a year: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year.html http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-... Yet the cost of goods has been increasing steadily: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infla...
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Wage growth has been flat because compensation has shifted from wages to benefits. Real compensation per hour has done nothing but increase. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB
• GFischer 10y ago
  Another point I've seen made is that capital costs are cheaper than ever, so automation can be financed at almost no cost. So higher tariffs will be a boon on robot-makers, not necessarily the working-class people that expected to take those jobs.
• MK999 10y ago
  Robotization is coming, eg Telsa, but it doesn't mean the trade deals are 'fair/free trade'. China is a currency manipulator for example, which is well known, but I learned it in the free documentary 'Death by China'